Cameras have been described in which various forms of photographic data are recorded in parallel tracks on magnetic layers formed on photographic film strips in the camera. A representative example is found in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 5,130,745 in which four camera dedicated tracks are recorded, two on each side of the film strip. More recently, it has been proposed to use only two camera tracks along one edge of the film strip and to reserve two tracks on the other edge for photofinisher use. Such a camera with multiple magnetic tracks writing capability is generally adapted to write both tracks at the same time during film transport either in the film advance direction or in the film rewind direction. In either case, there are complications in power consumption and magnetic circuit drive "head room" (particularly in a three-volt battery system camera) as well as separate recording drive circuit and added software timing and calculation requirements. If recording is performed in the rewind direction after all image frames have been exposed, there is the further complication that a large amount of nonvolatile memory is required in order to store all of the data from each exposed frame until rewind occurs.
In a proposed camera data recording system involving parallel recorded data tracks, one of the recorded tracks is reserved for camera information such as date, time, flash fire, image orientation and frame aspect ratio format designation. This is relatively simple information that can be recorded in, for example, six bytes of data. In this proposed system, a second track is reserved to record annotation data, such as a "print title". This data is the sort that is inputted by the camera user for recording on the film to be subsequently read back at the photofinisher and printed on the back of the photographic print. This annotated information is relatively high in content and would typically require about 30 bytes of data to be recorded on the film. Thus, it would require significant nonvolatile memory to store all of the data for each of the frames on the film if this data were to be stored for recording during the rewind operation.
It is, therefore, seen to be desirable to provide a method of recording data in a photographic film camera within plural tracks on the film that alleviates problems associated with simultaneously recording the data on the plural tracks and also alleviates the need for extensive nonvolatile memory that would be required to store all of the data for recording during the rewind operation.